Je ne voulais pas être père
2026 · 2m
Directed by Nabil Idama
Genres: drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
Romain, 35, lost his daughter Mélissa; since her death he celebrates her birthday every year, refusing to let her become a mere memory. Today she would have turned 11, and he must choose between keeping his promise to move forward and continuing the ritual that keeps her alive, at the risk of losing himself in it.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A grief film that knows better than to wallow—Idama refuses the expected catharsis, letting Romain's ritual become its own argument about what we owe the dead, and that refusal to resolve is exactly what makes it sting.
Formally restrained and attuned to the weight of repetition, *Je ne voulais pas être père* sits squarely in the European arthouse lineage of intimate character study, where emotional precision matters more than plot.
Two minutes to collapse a man's entire philosophy of memory into a single gesture—the choice to show us the ritual itself rather than its emotional aftermath is what transforms this from competent grief drama into something that actually *breaks* you.